1. Get a Domain and Web Hosting

First you need to figure out what you actually want for your .com, .org domain etc.

We recommend searching here to make sure your desired domain is available. If you’re looking to buy a domain that someone already owns are has even established a money-making website for you can checkout this site.

Try to keep your domain name relevant, short and easy to remember.

Now you’ll actually need hosting in order to store and share your domain and website with the world. We highly recommend BlueHost. When signing up for either of those hosts you also signup for the domain at the same time for convenience.

It does matter what hosting you get. If you decide to shop around you should at least look for Linux based hosting that fully supports WordPress. You may not know what that means, just keep an eye out for it when reviewing options. We recommend avoiding Windows based hosts and GoDaddy.

2. Get WordPress and Theme

WordPress is the most popular open source (free) blog and website CMS (Content Management System) software around and we highly recommend it. Essentially, it allows you to add, edit and manage pages, posts, tags, categories and many other settings and features for the behind-the-scenes part of a website known as the back-end. If you’ve ever used Word, it’s just about that easy to edit pages.

3. Get Skills, Help and Pro Services

Now that your website is in place you’ll likely want to customize the look and features. As for the look, start here. For features you can install from a selection of over 15k plugins that add advanced capabilities to your website. Here’s how to install a plugin.

For help and website discussion, register for the forum. And here is a forum specifically for beginners(retired).

And if you want to take your website to the very next level of professionalism in web design, graphic design, SEO, marketing and so much more we highly recommend calmest_ghostDESIGN for web services.